


Le Réveillon de Noël

by Backwards_Blackbird



Category: Les Misérables (Movie 1978), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21821437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Backwards_Blackbird/pseuds/Backwards_Blackbird
Summary: Javert is on patrol on a frigid Christmas Eve when he falls ill. Someone has the kindness to take him in - but who?
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	Le Réveillon de Noël

**Le Réveillon de Noël**

I woke in unfamiliar sleeping quarters, wrapped in wool and silken sheets, under low and dark soffited ceilings. Pain bloomed in my throat at the base of my tongue. My nose burned, as did my eyes.

The quiet ticking of a bedside clock marked every passing moment.

With each flicker of candlelight, the night gradually returned to me. I had been outside for hours in the dark and winding streets, snow on my coat and my ears aching from the cold air. There had been multiple accounts of theft on Rue d’Argent over the course of three days, windows broken and doors battered in the pitch-black morning hours. Pocket watches, pearls, silver mirrors and ivory combs were pilfered. Fine but frivolous items, items men of good station might gift during the Advent. 

Christmas Eve seemed an extremely likely night for the next attempt, bitterly cold though it was. And I would certainly be there to witness it.

I know not how many hours I lasted before the telling signs of a fever crept up the back of my neck, under my ears and beneath my jaw. With every passing demi-hour, my focus dimmed. Revelers stumbled out of their warm taverns into the snow, remarking upon how festive the weather was. Others sang off-key and spun with their lady company.

“ _Un flambeau, Janette, Isabelle!  
Un flambeau, courons au berceau—ohhh!_”

That one promptly slipped on a patch of ice. I peered skeptically from under my tophat. These were hardly my suspects.

One even stumbled straight into my shoulder, I seem to recall, where I stood concealed in the shadow of a tenement building. 

“ _Pardonnez-moi, m’sieur, M’sieur l’Inspecteur! Je m’excuse. Joyeux Noël._ ”

I might have reprimanded him, bade him to hurry home and watch his step, but all that my throat could contribute was a hoarse and rattling cough.

The next few hours were very much the same, with no sight of a suspicious soul near any of the robbed establishments. Although it is with guilt that I admit my eyes were scarcely open more than a moment at a time, by this hour. The fever boiled within me, my vision began to blur, and a cold sweat gathered under the arms of my uniform. Snow clung to my side-whiskers.

The next event I could remember was someone calling to me from a glowing stoop, only to catch me, and to touch me with warm, firm hands. I was carried inside, away from the storm.

And here I lay. Those thieves had likely taken their share and more in my absence. I clenched my eyes shut at the thought and sank into the pillow, which was finer than any bedding I’d ever known. It smelled of fresh lavender and cradled my head in the softest down. Who felt I deserved this?

“Monsieur,” came a voice with a knock on the closed door.

My eyes struggled to open, and they struggled more to comprehend who had entered my room.

“Monsieur le Maire? Where the devil am I?”

He chuckled. “You are in my bed chamber, which I’m sure is quite the surprise.” Madeleine set down a silver chalice of tea by the bedside. “I must say, it’s fortunate what a night owl I am with my reading—and Sister Simplice, as well. She saw you outside and noted that you looked unwell. And… unwell, you certainly were,” he said gravely. He sat on the edge of the bed like a concerned feline. His golden hair shone in the candle glow, and his deep-set eyes watched me with the same tender care he showed all of Montreuil.

All the same, it stirred something in me. Something rare, but something I remembered well.

“Forgive me, Monsieur,” I wheezed. “I must be quite the imposition.”

Madeleine smiled gently. “Not in the slightest.”

He then touched a hand to my cheek, and I flinched, unused to the contact.

“ _Désolé, inspecteur._ ” He let his fingers rest there for a moment. “Your fever has yet to break. It is persistent.”

I sighed sorrowfully and closed my eyes. “Monsieur, you are far too kind to take me in. But I’ve duties to attend to tonight. A series of robberies, thieves on Rue d’Argent.”

“On Christmas Eve?” Madeleine said in disbelief. “Surely even the worst of thieves is indulging in a bit of revelry tonight. But no matter. You must stay, you must rest. You are weak, inspector.”

“Monsieur, I—”

Madeleine knitted his brow. “Rue d’Argent, you said? However did you end up here?”

I took pause. What an excellent question. Rue d’Argent was several streets away from the mayor’s home. Had my feet carried me here of their own accord, knowing well he would be the only man to take me in? Knowing well that I could not make it back to the station, let alone my home, in my current state?

The room spun, and I shut my eyes. I brought a hand to my forehead. “Madeleine.”

“Javert,” he said softly and rested a firm hand over my heart. “ _Calmez-vous._ ” 

In the haze of my raised temperature, through my altered perception, through ears chapped and aching with cold, I heard for the first time in the mayor’s voice traces of a provincial accent. Notes of the Provençal dialect, carefully concealed beneath a more educated tongue. The precise dialect I’d grown up speaking, then learned to similarly conceal.

My ears hung on this. That was an accent I hadn’t heard since Toulon.

“Javert? Javert.”

My eyes opened with sudden clarity. I forgot myself entirely and gripped the mayor’s hand where it rested on my chest. “Monsieur… have we known each other?”

His eyes were steady. “What do you mean, inspector?”

“Before,” I mumbled. “Before your current station. Years ago. Your face is so dearly familiar to my eyes.” It was as though someone else had spoken those last words. My own voice echoed in my ears, and the mayor’s face began to blur.

Madeleine adjusted his shirtsleeves calmly. “I think not, Javert.” 

My fever-clouded mind began to blend images from the past with those that were before me, and an acute desire, a familiar burn took hold of my senses. This man’s face. He looked so like him…

His tender eye, his calming hand. These things could not belong to Jean Valjean. And yet, the storm that surged in me at the sight of him—that was very much the same.

My breathing raced, and I was at once gripped by something unnamable, something frightening. I was forced to relinquish control and sink into this malady, dark and unforgiving, which scorched me from within. Paranoia bloomed, a fear that quickened my heart and spoke nonsense from my lips.

My eyes widened. “Am I dying, Monsieur?”

Madeleine lay two heavy hands on my shoulders. “No, Javert. You are not.”

The intensity of his eyes held me fast and slowed my thoughts. I breathed low and steady once, twice, in the quiet warmth of the wood-paneled chamber. Madeleine fixed his gaze and brought his face near to mine, bringing his lips to my left cheek. He felt cool against my burning skin.

“ _C’est le Réveillon de Noël,_ ” he said. “The lord will not take you tonight.”

And that was all. I brought one trembling, spindly hand to frame his face, and he gripped my wrist in reassurance. We sat like this, in something like silent prayer, for what felt like a comfortable eternity. And then he leaned forward yet again to place a kiss on my lips, as if to bless my struggling body. 

My eyes lost their focus until the scalar chiming of Christmas bells shook me awake and greeted my ears with the morning light. The sudden passage of time was nearly as difficult to process as the harsh, white sun that streamed through the cracks of the window shudders. I placed a hand over my eyes. I did not see another soul until Sister Simplice came to me with an herbal balm and warm bread.

Monsieur Madeleine had gone to morning service, she said.

And here was I, left to wonder if the night before had been a dream.


End file.
